The present invention generally relates to databases and more specifically to apparatus and methods for providing a database system analysis tools.
Modern database systems are very complex, comprised of numerous components and often are used for performance-sensitive operations. Diagnosing problems and evaluating a system's performance may therefore be a very involved and complicated task as there are potentially many performance and analysis metrics. As a result, a database system administrator may desire to use summary statistics to view and analyze one or more performance and analysis metrics at the same time.
Determining system statistics to diagnose system problems or to evaluate a performance may require manual analysis of log files or intrusive analysis tools that may compromise the database security or performance. Existing mechanisms to collect system data statistics may require access to privileged database information. System log files and existing analysis tools may inadvertently capture sensitive or confidential system data or require database privileges that are not appropriate for some system administrators or contractors. Furthermore system statistics may need to be collected from a variety of sources within the system. Each data source may have its own format and data layout making it difficult and cumbersome to collect and capture data.